Latex can't produce web output, which is increasingly a target I want.

Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people (other than giving them the raw LaTeX). The PDFs latex produces are probably the least accessible format available (much worse than a word proeuced pdf, or some html). This matters to me, and should matter more to other people (in my opinion).

BUT that is what makes Pandoc powerful. You convert your latex or your whatever into: (Can we please add Racket's Scribble? It is by far the reason why Racket has the best documentation of any language. https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/)

Well, except LaTeX probably isn't the best base format to write in -- Pandoc's LaTeX parser isn't very good, it doesn't parse (from a quick check) any of the papers I've written. They've tried hard, but I think it's a losing battle, particularly once people start using a large range of packages.

What about htlatex? It is quite powerful. In most of the cases, it produces nice HTML pages out of the box, with automatic rendering of figures and mathematical equations into PNG. It is part of most LaTeX distributions. On Linux, for example, just type

For me, at least, htlatex never works just quite right. There are a lot of edge cases where it's broken. If you want to preserve having non-PDF output, starting in something like Pandoc Markdown is a better idea. And I do most of my documents in regular LaTeX.

If you grab any academic paper (particularly two columns) there is a good chance getting the text out will be hard, and any part of the paper with maths or tables will be unusable. Sorry. I'm away from a computer now, to make a smaller example.

Accessibility is a big current push from the TeX Users Group. The president, Boris Veytsman, has made moving it forward a big goal. I know that a lot of people are working on aspects of that, but the name I hear the most is Ross Moore, who I have heard talk on making the output be PDF/A-3a compliant. I understood that it is a long way there.

I agree. If one is going to use LaTeX directly or indirectly via Pandoc, eventually one would have to build up a personal template to fine-tune the look and feel of the documents.

If one is going to write LaTeX code anyway, it seems easier and cleaner to use LaTeX all the way, move all the boilerplate along with the personal template to say, a file named preamble.tex, and \input{preamble.tex} in the documents.

However, there are situations where Pandoc can be convenient. For example, I wanted a document[1] to be written primarily as README.md (CommonMark format), so that GitHub could render it as the project README. At the same time I wanted to render a PDF output from a customized form of the content. Pandoc is convenient for cases like this although it takes a bit of work to fine-tune the formatting and customize the content for each output format.

>If one is going to write LaTeX code anyway, it seems easier and cleaner to use LaTeX all the way, move all the boilerplate along with the personal template to say, a file named preamble.tex, and \input{preamble.tex} in the documents.

Not sure why you think it has to be that way. I author LaTeX documents using org mode. Org mode handles most of the boilerplate, and I can still put pretty much any custom LaTeX within the org document, wherever I want it (this includes \newcommand, etc). I lose nothing by going to org mode, and I gain much in terms of reduced boilerplate.

Yup. I’ve got a pandoc template for doing org-latex-pdf conversion, as well as some org templates for common documents that my clients need. Hack away on the document in org (which I’m probably going to be doing anyway, since the rest of my life is in there too), and then when it’s ready to hand off, turn it into a PDF using a shell script.

My absolute favourite moment with that flow was a client who wanted one as a docx instead of a PDF. Pandoc obliged and they commented that I must have spent a lot of time reformatting things for them :)

It isn't clear to me whether you are saying that Pandoc is necessary or if you are saying that Pandoc is unnecessary and LaTeX alone is sufficient for all purposes.

I think your parent comment was saying that LaTeX alone is sufficient. You also seem to be saying that LaTeX alone is sufficient while using Org mode. Would you please clarify if I am interpreting your comment correctly or not?

>It isn't clear to me whether you are saying that Pandoc is necessary or if you are saying that Pandoc is unnecessary and LaTeX alone is sufficient for all purposes.

I'm not saying either. The parent said it's easier and cleaner to use LaTeX all the way. I was pointing out that it is easier to write in a format like Org mode and export to LaTeX (whether via Pandoc or Org mode's built-in exporter).

I wrote my dissertation using Pandoc. It might seem that the LaTeX boilerplate is minimal, but Markdown is even more minimal, and it preempts the urge to fuss with your layout. Writing in Markdown means that you can wave your hand at the document and say, "It's a draft, I'll fix the formatting once I'm sure I even want this material." Afterwards, fixing the layout is really easy because you can drop raw LaTeX in wherever you need to, and you haven't wasted countless hours laying out a float you later end up cutting.